Saving Spreadsheet Data

Example Google Spreadsheet

Tip

Save your files beginning with a date formatted like this YYYYMMDD. For example: 20171020-myspreadsheet.xlxs (.xlxs is for Excel spreadsheets). This way you'll have your spreadsheets in chronological order on your computer.

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It's a beautiful thing that Sheets
automatically saves work for you.

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Unfortunately, not all your
spreadsheet software will.

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Remember to save your work regularly.

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It's an awful feeling when you lose
work because your machine crashes, and

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the last time you saved
was four hours ago.

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Here in Sheets we can see that the last
edit was made seconds ago, and

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if I make a change right up
there in that same area, Fun,

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it saves automatically.

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Sometimes when you're working with
a spreadsheet, you make a mistake but

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don't catch it.

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That's why it's best
practice to use Save As for

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spreadsheet software that isn't Sheets.

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The formatting I like to use is year,
month, date.

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this will keep things in
chronological order on your machine.

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Don't see what I'm talking about?

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Pause this video and go create a bunch
of different files in a folder on

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your computer with different date syntax,
and see what happens.

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It's not pretty.

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[SOUND] This is what I do for
saving files.

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For example, I have the same file, and
I've saved it a bunch of different times.

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And what I'll do is I'll do the year, The
month and the date, and then the version.

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So if I'm working with a file
over the course of the same day,

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I might have multiple different
versions on that day.

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This isn't as important when working with
Sheets, but it's a super important and

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foundational best practice when
working with spreadsheets.

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Ask your colleagues if there's a preferred
file naming syntax where you work.